Max Mayfield (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
zoomingupthathill) wrote2022-09-28 04:12 pm
zoomingupthathill) wrote2022-09-28 04:12 pm
Entry tags:
RYSLIG; application
OOC INFORMATION
Name: Ashley
Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
kabunevermind
Age: 18+
Other Characters: Riley Williams, Jodariel
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Max Mayfield
Age: 15
Canon: Stranger Things
Canon Point: Post-revival (Season 4 Episode 9)
Character Information: Wiki link here! It's got all but some of season 4 so I'll summarize that here! There IS a little bit of season 4 summarized but it cuts off very abruptly so. Such is life.
Max has grown very distant from the rest of the group, isolating herself well into the new school year. She brushes off all attempts to talk to her with sarcasm and anger, but she does listen to Lucas's championship basketball game over the radio, showing an interest in staying at least a little connected to her friends and ex-boyfriend. During the break between seasons 3 and 4, Max and her mom moved into Forest Hills Trailer Park, putting her right next to where Eddie Munson lives. This gave her a front row seat to a crime scene on the first morning of spring break, March 22nd. Between this and catching a peek at her the previous night, Max is able to figure out the murdered teenager in the Munson trailer is Chrissy Cunningham. She goes right to Dustin to try and figure out what's going on, particularly because around the time Chrissy dies, the electricity starts going haywire, a tell-tale sign of the Upside Down. She also decides to investigate it because of her massive PTSD around Billy's death, as even the slightest chance that a gate is open would be very very fucking bad.
Max and Dustin draft Steve and Robin into their search for Eddie, as if anyone would have information, it's the guy who was at the scene of the crime. They track down where he's hiding out and explain to him about the Upside Down when he tells them what he saw, which is Chrissy going into a trance of some kind before being lifted into the air and having her limbs twisted around and eyes gouged out. A particularly horrible way to die. As is typical of Stranger Things characters, they give the monster they're looking for the name Vecna, after the boss of Eddie's recent D&D campaign, due to the apparent similarities in their abilities. The group inform Eddie that he's the number one suspect in Chrissy's murder, so he's got to keep hiding out while they investigate.
Soon after, they discover another high school student, Fred Benson, is found dead in a similar state as Chrissy. Nancy, who was doing her own investigation with him, joins the rest of them and they split up to look for clues, with Max going to her guidance counselor Ms. Kelley's house since she passed Chrissy leaving a session as she was entering it. When Ms. Kelley won't give Max anymore information, she steals the office key and they sneak into the school to investigate her files. Good news, they confirm Fred was also seeing her and found common symptoms between the two—headaches, nosebleeds, and nightmares. Bad news, Max realizes those are also things she's been experiencing, just as she hears Vecna call her name and experiences a vision of an ominous grandfather clock.
Max figures she has about 24 hours as both Fred and Chrissy died 24 hours after their first vision. More bad news, Lucas meets up with the group and tells them the basketball jocks—lead by Jason, Chrissy's boyfriend—are hunting down Eddie. The group resolves to find a solution, with Nancy and Robin going to look into Victor Creel, a man who lost his family to a "demon" 30 years prior, the bodies having similar causes of death as Vecna's victims, while the rest go on Max-watching duty. Max herself is pretty despondent and gives up hope very quickly, using what she thinks of as her last 24 hours to write letters to her friends and loved ones, to be opened when she dies. Eventually, she grows fed up of just waiting around and demands they go to her trailer, where she leaves letters for her immediate family and speaks with her mother—who turns into Vecna in another vision, telling her she deserves what's happening and that she's "broken everything." Yikes.
The next stop is the cemetery where Max, alone, reads the letter she wrote to Billy at his grave. It's rough, as she describes how awful everything has been and apologizes for not doing anything when she watched him die, saying she's thought if she'd saved him, maybe the two of them could've become friends, like actual siblings, despite the fact that she knows they hated each other. Cue Vecna, in the form of Billy, tormenting her and saying she left out how guilty she feels, because deep down part of her wanted him to die, and sometimes, part of her wants to join him in death. Well, Max takes off running in the vision, as in reality she's still sitting at the grave, in a trance and twitching. Steve, Lucas, and Dustin find her, and they desperately try to wake her up, while Dustin tries to reach Nancy and Robin.
Max's years of monster-dodging have proven helpful, as she's able to avoid Vecna in this mindscape and even cross over into what the group later determines is Vecna's mind. It's here that he catches up with her, as she sees the corpses of his victims almost on display, and it's at the point where she's restrained that the boys hear back about what could've saved Victor Creel from a Vecna death—music. His favorite song. The guys get Max's walkman and her cassettes. Max, who has been obsessively listening to Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" in that way you do when your brain is fucked up. They shove the headphones over her ears and she's finally able to hear them calling out to her, as well as see a portal back to reality, where her body has risen into the air. Max makes the conscious choice to fight back, as she mentally relives her happiest moments with her loved ones. She pulls out one of Vecna's tentacles and runs, as Vecna throws everything in the mindscape at her. She just barely escapes and wakes up Lucas's arms.
The group meets back up at the Wheeler house where they take turns keeping watch on Max, who now has "Running Up That Hill" playing constantly on about a 45 minute loop. She can't sleep, so when her watch drifts off she takes to drawing (courtesy of the youngest Wheeler Holly's crayons) what she saw in Vecna's mindscape. When the others wake up and Nancy takes a look at it, she recognizes some of the architecture as bits and pieces of the Creel house that she'd seen in articles. That's the group's next stop, as the place hasn't been touched since the triple homicide in the 1950s. There, Max and Lucas start to reconnect, and they notice their flashlights flickering. The group is able to use the flickering flashlights and bursts of electricity where there should be none to find where they are pretty sure Vecna's lair would be—the attic of the house, in the Upside Down. As they do, there's a power surge and all of their flashlight bulbs shatter.
In going to tell Eddie what they've learned, they discover his hideout is swarming with cops, and some eavesdropping reveals one of the boys on the basketball team, Patrick, was Vecna's latest victim. They're able to get in touch with Eddie via walkie talkie and go to meet him in the woods. Max and Lucas once more have a heart-to-heart, where he apologizes for not being there for her and she says he doesn't have to, as she's the one who broke up with him and isolated herself from the rest of them. They both resolve to stick together. After some fumbling around and seemingly faulty compass work, the group find Eddie and recap their findings. He tells them he was there when Patrick was killed, and his broken watch confirms it was at the same time as the power surge in the Creel house, confirming they know where Vecna is, they just have to find a way into the Upside Down.
Which they have! Dustin and Lucas figure out the compass going crazy is a result of being near a gate to the Upside Down, a tiny one. They follow it to the lake where Patrick was killed, and while the older teens go out on a boat to investigate, the younger group is left behind to wait on the shore. As the police show up to investigate, Max yells that she found the killer and takes off running to try and lead them away from the lake. Dustin and Lucas follow, and all of them are caught and taken back to the Wheeler house for interrogation both by the cops and all of their very concerned parents (sans Max's mom), as the community has been whipped up into a frenzy. They very poorly try to cover things up and are individually questioned, in which the police who question Max describe her as "kind of mean" in her answers.
During her interrogation, Dustin, Lucas, and Lucas's sister Erica theorize and posit that during Vecna's kills, he makes a powerful psychic connection with his victims strong enough to rip open a portal through space and time. That's how the gates form, and that may be why he's so intent on killing a bunch of traumatized teenagers: More gates, more places to enter from the Upside Down, which lines up with the Mind Flayer's motivations, linking the two. They also get in touch with the older teens, who have gone through the gate and are in the Upside Down. They plot to meet up at Eddie's trailer. When Max gets out of her interrogation, she joins them, and the group use the police and their parents talking as an opportunity to sneak out and bike to the trailer. Once there, they find the gate on the ceiling.
The younger kids set up a mattress and rope system on their side to get the older teens through. They're almost all out when Nancy goes into a trance, contacted by Vecna. She later relays to everyone what she's told and what she can piece together, the only bit of which is not in the history on the wiki is: Vecna was human!! And Victor Creel's son Henry!! Who did not actually die, but psychically killed his mother and sister then fell into a coma and was taken by the same shady government place that El was raised in!!! It's all connected!!!! Anyway Vecna lets Nancy go, and the kids conference in Max's trailer.
Vecna's trying to invade, there need to be four victims, and Max can still feel him in her thoughts. With this knowledge, she volunteers to be bait. While Vecna's trying to kill her, Max will retreat into her happiest thoughts to try and block him out like before. Lucas stands by at the ready with Kate Bush in case things get too hairy. The others go back into the Upside Down, some drawing Vecna's sentries away, and then while he's in his trance to connect with Max, they unleash hell on him. They gather weapons and prepare, and Max, Lucas, and Erica as a lookout go to the Creel house to enact their plan. Before starting it up, Max and Lucas share a tender moment where they agree to go to the movies on Friday if they aren't all dead.
To get Vecna's attention, Max starts talking about her worst thoughts. She's been thinking about what he said as Billy and says she tried to deny it, but there's some truth. That Billy made her life hell, and sometimes, at night she'd pray for something awful to happen to him. She'd imagine him crashing his car and dying and finally leaving her alone forever. She says she didn't run to him because she didn't think he deserved to be saved, all the while crying. She's tried to forgive herself, but she can't. So now, she prays that something bad happens to her. Lucas suddenly starts talking, going against the plan, calling her awful and saying it's good she's going to die—and Max figures out after some very upsetting several seconds that this is Vecna coming for her. She takes off running through the twisty turny mindscape until she can focus on her happiest memories and hide away in one in particular: The Snow Ball, the dance from eighth grade.
For awhile, it works. Then the gym starts going wrong. Vecna starts taunting her, and showing her snippets of the rest of the plan, which is not going well, as Jason and his buddies have found Erica and Lucas, Vecna's found the group going to the Creel house in the Upside Down, and the distraction team is getting swarmed. He invades Max's happy memory and pins her to the wall psychically. Just when it looks like all hope is lost, El bursts in, as she's been trying to get into Max's mind for some time to protect her. The girls are able to have a brief moment to recollect themselves, before El and Vecna fight. Vecna outclasses her and while she's down, Max tries to attack him with a broken chair, only to get thrown against a wall and knocked out for her troubles. Vecna restrains both girls in his mindscape. El tries and fails to convince Vecna to stop, learning he may ALSO be the Mind Flayer and like, everything that's been tormenting them from the start. It's unclear how much of this Max hears. He begins slowly killing Max, whose body in the physical world starts to rise. As Jason's been fighting with Lucas, her Walkman has been broken in the process, so there's no Kate Bush to bring her out.
As Lucas subdues Jason, Max's legs and right arm twist and break. Her eyes start to bleed, blinding her. An impassioned speech from Mike gives El the mental strength to break out of her restraints and she rips Vecna away from Max. She continues to fight him...but the damage has been done. Max wakes up in reality in Lucas's arms again, but she feebly cries that she can't feel or see anything. As she desperately begs not to die, she slips away. Vecna wins.
The ground rips open in Hawkins. Vecna's invasion is slowly beginning. But Max is dead, right? Well, yes. But El is not content with that. Still connected to Max’s mind, El uses her strong connection with Max to pull her back in what is a literal miracle. She restarts Max’s heart, and Max is taken to the hospital where she is alive but in a coma. Two days later, El still can’t find Max’s mind. The implication is she’s with Vecna and Hawkins is about to become a war zone.
...Aaaand that's where we wait for two years!! Stranger Things!!!
All this aside, a note! We don't really know what state Max will be in when/if she wakes up, and let alone what to do with the Fog healing things in Ryslig. What I’m going with is her broken bones are healed but she has trouble walking and using her right arm, particularly on non-fog days. Additionally, the implication is she's currently blind but with no way to tell if it's permanent or temporary. So, I'm erring on the side of temporary, but with lasting damage similar to her broken limbs. This way, she doesn't wake up in a new world completely unable to see or move, but we don't skirt over "curing" of potential long lasting disabilities. Phew! Let's get to the personality, shall we?
Personality:
"Nobody calls me Maxine. It's Max."
Max is a rebel. A girl who marches to the beat of her own drum like she dares the world to try and challenge her. In short, she's non-conformist and defiantly so. She likes video games and skateboarding and building forts out in the woods—typically all things boys like to do. It's gotten her her share of negative attention, even when she was very young and hanging out at the skatepark. Her mom's tried to get her to be softer, gentler, more interested in the sorts of things she is, like her hair and makeup, but Max isn't interested. She would rather defy expectations and do what she wants to...and also not be like her mother, who is soft and gentle and keeps ending up with the worst men who take advantage of her and hurt her. That isn't the root of why Max is who she is, but it certainly hasn't encouraged her to be any less defiant and in-your-face with her interests.
Speaking of her interests, at all times Max loves to be athletic and active—she's a very physical sort of person, and before the death of Billy she's rarely seen without her skateboard. It's something she uses to define herself, as when talking about what she could bring to the Party—the younger teens' name for themselves—she states she could be their zoomer. Sure, it's not a D&D thing, but she's adamant about it. She even at age thirteen has some experience driving! She knows how to get places, and fast, never liking to sit still, "except for movies." A lot of narration in her POV novel describes her as needing to move when she feels antsy or getting uncomfortable if she stays in one place for too long. And it's taught her some valuable life skills, like how to dress a bad gash or scraped up knees when she wipes out on her board.
With all of this, while she has shades of the sort of not-like-other-girls tomboy who looks down on them, really what it comes down to is Max doesn't really know how to talk to most other girls she knows, who tend to care more about fashion and their appearance and being that kind of polite you're taught to be when you're a young girl in the 80s. Max never really learned that—and never really cared to! She's naturally rough around the edges, with her POV novel stating she doesn't know how to even sound "soft" when she talks to others. It's off-putting, and while she doesn't really want to be different from the way she is, she's still a teenager who gets lonely and confused that she doesn't really know how to get people to like her. She's able to reconcile a little bit of her view of feminine girls by the end of season 2, after seeing Nancy easily wield a shotgun, but she still isn't great at making friends with those more feminine girls. It's what makes her friendship with El so influential on her, as when the two start hanging out they become very close, very quickly.
Perhaps part of why it's hard for Max to make friends or talk with others is because of how forthright she is. She knows most people don't say what they're really thinking or feeling, so to get information out of them, throw them off their guard, she's often blunt. It's rarely a calculated thing and rather a side effect of how she just doesn't like to bullshit. She's not going to mince words to protect someone's feelings, especially if she doesn't really care about them. Hell, even when she does care about people, she's straightforward, such as when giving El boyfriend advice during season 3. Max tells it like it is, if she thinks your hobby is stupid (Dustin), thinks your boyfriend is stupid (El), thinks you, her boyfriend, aren't doing a good job (Lucas)—Max speaks her mind and everyone knows it. She is in this way both blunt and very candid...while also being quiet about her own feelings when they could leave her vulnerable. That's one thing Max never wants to be with other people.
For most of my life, I’d been like a balloon tied to a railing somewhere, unprotected. I’d gotten so used to the feeling that it was hard to realize it was gone."
In fact, she's carefully crafted herself so she doesn't have to be vulnerable. Something important to note about Max is she's perceptive. When the boys are watching her at school, though Max doesn't spare them a second glance, she can tell. Her mom isn't good at spotting assholes, so she is, and it's easy for her to notice she is. It's not a surprise, but she knows Mike doesn't like her, and she's upfront about asking him. She picks up the little things, like which of her mom's boyfriends has a gambling problem, or when Billy gets that look in his eye that means he's going to be unpredictably dangerous.
On that note, she can tell when her friends (both before and in Hawkins) were pitying her for the Billy situation. It's things like that that make Max a bit of a paradox—she doesn't really care if she doesn't fit in, and she doesn't want to, but she still knows about it, wants to, if only to keep track of who thinks and feels and knows what. It comes with trying to protect herself—because she's got a hard time believing others can protect her. Her mom is, in her eyes, too soft to do so, her dad flakes out on her, Billy is a wildcard that she usually hates, and Neil, her stepdad, is the worst person ever. Those are her constants. Friends from California were at one point or another scared off by Billy, so she's been relatively alone, resulting in her looking out for herself. Becoming perceptive.
And, now that she has some more people she can count on, while she's still perceptive it's not overly so. It sort of varies, honestly, given her mental state. Season 3 is where she's the most balanced, where even though something is off with Billy, at first she doesn't want to believe it's an Upside Down thing, because she cares about him despite it all. She dismisses El's assertions that something's wrong for more practical explanations, even though she can see some of the writing on the wall. Compared to season 2 wherein she's always throwing looks at people, always trying to get an ear in their private conversations, she's more mellow. In season 4 she dips the other way, out of trauma and depression, but that's more about how she's blocking other people out, because Max has a habit of being reclusive when hurt.
"So that's why I'm here. I just want you to take me away. And I want you...to make me disappear."
Even before Billy's death, as earlier stated, Max hates being vulnerable, even in small ways. She'd much rather tease Lucas than express how much she likes him. She waits until everyone's gone to express just how much she doesn't want Billy to be the Mind Flayer's host. She doesn't express to any of her friends pre-Hawkins about her complicated feelings about Billy, and she sure doesn't speak with her parents either. When her mom and stepdad announce they're moving, her response is to try and run away instead of argue. Again, a doer. Even when she starts to share her feelings with Lucas about her family situation, she trails off and he has to connect the dots on his own—that Billy takes his frustrations out on Max. She avoids saying anything that may make herself look vulnerable.
Thus, when everything gets too much, when it's impossible to hide that she's very vulnerable, she retreats entirely. During the gap between season 3 and season 4, as detailed in Lucas's POV novel, she doesn't once go to movie nights or hangouts with the group after El and Will move away. The day they pack up the Byers' house is perhaps the only day she tries to force herself to be "normal" and happy, and besides that she spends her time alone, either at what Hawkins calls a skatepark or the burned out remains of Benny's Burgers or other places where the people she knows won't be. Lucas describes her as being like a ghost. All she does is walk through the halls of school, listen to her walkman, and grieve. Whenever Lucas finds her at the skatepark, she isn't even skating, which goes to show just how deep her grief and guilt are.
Even before the big loss, Max still shows reclusive tendencies, not really trying to make friends when she first moves to Hawkins, even though she's pretty lonely without them. She goes to the arcade alone, skates alone and openly rebuffs the boys' attempts to be her friend—at first. It's a balancing act, because while she's used to taking care of herself, she still likes other people when she can get along with them, so there's a point where naturally she takes the plunge, even if she's been actively avoiding others, like when she just shows up for trick-or-treating and acts like she hadn't mocked Lucas and Dustin at school, or that Billy hadn't threatened to run the boys over just earlier that day. It takes a lot more when she's in the throes of trauma and grief in season 4, but what's better than nearly dying to get you to try and reconnect with those you love, right?
"Steve, if you think that I'm going to spend what is most likely the last day of my life in the armpit that is Mike Wheeler's basement, then you're out of your mind. So either take me where I want to go or tie me down, which is technically kidnapping of a minor. And if I live to see another day, Steve, I swear to God, I will prosecute."
And yet, reconnecting doesn't mean she's giving up one of her favorite pastimes, which is being rude. Max is so rude and by god she knows it. That's partly why she doesn't like to be "nice," it's that she isn't good at covering things up with gentle platitudes. No, Max is sarcastic, Max is curt, and Max is feisty—when she wants to let you know what she is feeling, she will do so in an energized and biting way. And honestly, she likes it a lot? Like, one of the reasons she connects with Lucas is he doesn't really care that she doesn't know how to sound soft when talking to others. He seems to have that kind of way of interacting with others too, where he is opinionated and kind of loud and people could take that to mean he does not care.
Which is another thing, yes Max is rude, Max likes to tease her friends, Max flips the bird every chance she can get—but that doesn't mean she doesn't care. A lot of her harsher attitude comes from caring, like with feeling that her mother can't protect herself, or even lashing back at Lucas and the rest of the boys when they start doing that thing where they shut her out but not entirely at the start of their friendship, effectively jerking her around. She cares! She can be quite mean about Mike regarding his and Eleven's relationship, but it's because she values El and wants her to know she can stand up for herself. This means her advice is "dump his ass" even though he's also her friend, but she believes in consequences for insensitive behavior. It's just another way she communicates. And, it's how she encourages her friends to be. Tough.
Everything about Max's life has encouraged her to be tough, even before things fell apart after Billy's death. She is naturally curt and often sounds callous even when she isn't, leading others to treat her that way. In response, she throws barbs right back. The world keeps expecting her to be a stereotypical girly-girl and pushes her when she's not. Her mother's taste in men keeps bringing home assholes she has to endure, and then the one who sticks around is the biggest asshole of all. Max's response to all of his hardship is to be tough. Not letting others see her cry, not giving into her vulnerabilities, that sort of thing. Even if she's emotionally affected by something someone says or does, she's going to try her damnedest to act like it's water off her back. That's how she acts with Billy, knowing that opening up would just give him another avenue to mess with her. If you're firm and stand your ground, then you're more secure.
"I know that I can be a jerk like him sometimes, and I do not want to be like him. Ever."
Of course, being tough sometimes leads her to be, well...abrasive, to say the least. Max isn't nice. She knows she isn't nice, and she doesn't really want to be. Sometimes this manifests as sarcasm or calling her friends nerds for their Dungeons and Dragons hobby, even though she likes science and horror movies and various other "nerdy" things. Sometimes, however, it manifests as the urge to be downright cruel. Her POV novel goes into her thought process when Mike is telling her about El in the gym, and in it she notes that sometimes when people are at their most vulnerable, it's like seeing them without their skin. It's wrong, and it makes her want to be mean to provoke a reaction. It's a dark thought, which ties into her sometimes callous response to others messing up. It doesn't occur to her that her mom could be looking out for Billy when she covers up various things he does (like give Max a cigarette), that she could be scared for Billy. She knows Billy's dad is the biggest monster of all in their house, but she it's Billy who she most directly interacts with, so it's Billy who she quietly prayed would get hurt, even though there's a part of her that loves him—or the idea of him, and the lost relationship they could've had.
In short, she's aware of her shortcomings and the fact that she relies more on cutting wit and sarcasm than emotional connection, but it's comfortable. It's safe, even when it doesn't feel that way. She knows the world will not be kind to her in return if she is kind to it. But she also knows too much anger and rage and she could see herself becoming a horrible person. One of Max's greatest fears is giving into her anger and becoming just like Billy, as he was a hurt kid once too. The fact that they are, in her eyes and by his own observations, alike? It scares her.
"I was thinking about something my dad had told me. The trick to being at home in the world, he said, was knowing how to do things. If you had the right tools, you could fix your own sink, find a job, figure out a problem. [...] When you can take apart a hinge or pick a lock, you can always get out."
All of the turbulence and instability in Max's life has led her to rely very strongly on herself. She's independent, or she at least strives hard to be. She knows how to pick locks and build things, because her father instilled in her at an early age that she should know how to do things. If no one else can help you, you can help you. Well, Max took this lesson a little bit too much to heart in some ways. But it also means she has a lot of various skills, like first aid, like quick reaction time, like picking locks. She takes time to teach herself little things that could help, even if she doesn't see a need for it right then. It makes her adaptable, and it makes her stand on her own.
And that lends itself to her being very courageous. Max is not a girl who stands down in the face of danger. When Vecna is actively hunting her, even when Lucas starts to offer other ways out, Max is intensely and utterly determined to not try and find other people they could use as bait. Max knows what she's dealing with, and she doesn't want to pull some other suffering kid in who doesn't. Even though she's escaped death already once and they don't know where Eleven is, or if she can even help, Max wants to stand up to Vecna and face him. She knows the risks, and she's accepted that she wants to live and fight, and that this will be a huge obstacle to that! But she's still going to do it.
Even if she's afraid, Max doesn't stand down. That is in some ways her undoing. But it's a part of who she is, and a big one at that.
5-10 Key Character Traits:
- Non-Conformist
- Active
- Forthright
- Perceptive
- Reclusive
- Feisty
- Tough
- Abrasive
- Independent
- Courageous
Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, EITHER, or opt for 100% RANDOMIZATION? Either!
Opt-Outs: Merperson, Naga, Nephilim, Slime, Simulacrum, Troll, Werebear (Jodariel)
Even though I've got a Harpy I'm fine with leaving that one in the considerations!
Roleplay Sample: Max on the July TDM!
Name: Ashley
Contact:
Age: 18+
Other Characters: Riley Williams, Jodariel
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Max Mayfield
Age: 15
Canon: Stranger Things
Canon Point: Post-revival (Season 4 Episode 9)
Character Information: Wiki link here! It's got all but some of season 4 so I'll summarize that here! There IS a little bit of season 4 summarized but it cuts off very abruptly so. Such is life.
Max has grown very distant from the rest of the group, isolating herself well into the new school year. She brushes off all attempts to talk to her with sarcasm and anger, but she does listen to Lucas's championship basketball game over the radio, showing an interest in staying at least a little connected to her friends and ex-boyfriend. During the break between seasons 3 and 4, Max and her mom moved into Forest Hills Trailer Park, putting her right next to where Eddie Munson lives. This gave her a front row seat to a crime scene on the first morning of spring break, March 22nd. Between this and catching a peek at her the previous night, Max is able to figure out the murdered teenager in the Munson trailer is Chrissy Cunningham. She goes right to Dustin to try and figure out what's going on, particularly because around the time Chrissy dies, the electricity starts going haywire, a tell-tale sign of the Upside Down. She also decides to investigate it because of her massive PTSD around Billy's death, as even the slightest chance that a gate is open would be very very fucking bad.
Max and Dustin draft Steve and Robin into their search for Eddie, as if anyone would have information, it's the guy who was at the scene of the crime. They track down where he's hiding out and explain to him about the Upside Down when he tells them what he saw, which is Chrissy going into a trance of some kind before being lifted into the air and having her limbs twisted around and eyes gouged out. A particularly horrible way to die. As is typical of Stranger Things characters, they give the monster they're looking for the name Vecna, after the boss of Eddie's recent D&D campaign, due to the apparent similarities in their abilities. The group inform Eddie that he's the number one suspect in Chrissy's murder, so he's got to keep hiding out while they investigate.
Soon after, they discover another high school student, Fred Benson, is found dead in a similar state as Chrissy. Nancy, who was doing her own investigation with him, joins the rest of them and they split up to look for clues, with Max going to her guidance counselor Ms. Kelley's house since she passed Chrissy leaving a session as she was entering it. When Ms. Kelley won't give Max anymore information, she steals the office key and they sneak into the school to investigate her files. Good news, they confirm Fred was also seeing her and found common symptoms between the two—headaches, nosebleeds, and nightmares. Bad news, Max realizes those are also things she's been experiencing, just as she hears Vecna call her name and experiences a vision of an ominous grandfather clock.
Max figures she has about 24 hours as both Fred and Chrissy died 24 hours after their first vision. More bad news, Lucas meets up with the group and tells them the basketball jocks—lead by Jason, Chrissy's boyfriend—are hunting down Eddie. The group resolves to find a solution, with Nancy and Robin going to look into Victor Creel, a man who lost his family to a "demon" 30 years prior, the bodies having similar causes of death as Vecna's victims, while the rest go on Max-watching duty. Max herself is pretty despondent and gives up hope very quickly, using what she thinks of as her last 24 hours to write letters to her friends and loved ones, to be opened when she dies. Eventually, she grows fed up of just waiting around and demands they go to her trailer, where she leaves letters for her immediate family and speaks with her mother—who turns into Vecna in another vision, telling her she deserves what's happening and that she's "broken everything." Yikes.
The next stop is the cemetery where Max, alone, reads the letter she wrote to Billy at his grave. It's rough, as she describes how awful everything has been and apologizes for not doing anything when she watched him die, saying she's thought if she'd saved him, maybe the two of them could've become friends, like actual siblings, despite the fact that she knows they hated each other. Cue Vecna, in the form of Billy, tormenting her and saying she left out how guilty she feels, because deep down part of her wanted him to die, and sometimes, part of her wants to join him in death. Well, Max takes off running in the vision, as in reality she's still sitting at the grave, in a trance and twitching. Steve, Lucas, and Dustin find her, and they desperately try to wake her up, while Dustin tries to reach Nancy and Robin.
Max's years of monster-dodging have proven helpful, as she's able to avoid Vecna in this mindscape and even cross over into what the group later determines is Vecna's mind. It's here that he catches up with her, as she sees the corpses of his victims almost on display, and it's at the point where she's restrained that the boys hear back about what could've saved Victor Creel from a Vecna death—music. His favorite song. The guys get Max's walkman and her cassettes. Max, who has been obsessively listening to Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" in that way you do when your brain is fucked up. They shove the headphones over her ears and she's finally able to hear them calling out to her, as well as see a portal back to reality, where her body has risen into the air. Max makes the conscious choice to fight back, as she mentally relives her happiest moments with her loved ones. She pulls out one of Vecna's tentacles and runs, as Vecna throws everything in the mindscape at her. She just barely escapes and wakes up Lucas's arms.
The group meets back up at the Wheeler house where they take turns keeping watch on Max, who now has "Running Up That Hill" playing constantly on about a 45 minute loop. She can't sleep, so when her watch drifts off she takes to drawing (courtesy of the youngest Wheeler Holly's crayons) what she saw in Vecna's mindscape. When the others wake up and Nancy takes a look at it, she recognizes some of the architecture as bits and pieces of the Creel house that she'd seen in articles. That's the group's next stop, as the place hasn't been touched since the triple homicide in the 1950s. There, Max and Lucas start to reconnect, and they notice their flashlights flickering. The group is able to use the flickering flashlights and bursts of electricity where there should be none to find where they are pretty sure Vecna's lair would be—the attic of the house, in the Upside Down. As they do, there's a power surge and all of their flashlight bulbs shatter.
In going to tell Eddie what they've learned, they discover his hideout is swarming with cops, and some eavesdropping reveals one of the boys on the basketball team, Patrick, was Vecna's latest victim. They're able to get in touch with Eddie via walkie talkie and go to meet him in the woods. Max and Lucas once more have a heart-to-heart, where he apologizes for not being there for her and she says he doesn't have to, as she's the one who broke up with him and isolated herself from the rest of them. They both resolve to stick together. After some fumbling around and seemingly faulty compass work, the group find Eddie and recap their findings. He tells them he was there when Patrick was killed, and his broken watch confirms it was at the same time as the power surge in the Creel house, confirming they know where Vecna is, they just have to find a way into the Upside Down.
Which they have! Dustin and Lucas figure out the compass going crazy is a result of being near a gate to the Upside Down, a tiny one. They follow it to the lake where Patrick was killed, and while the older teens go out on a boat to investigate, the younger group is left behind to wait on the shore. As the police show up to investigate, Max yells that she found the killer and takes off running to try and lead them away from the lake. Dustin and Lucas follow, and all of them are caught and taken back to the Wheeler house for interrogation both by the cops and all of their very concerned parents (sans Max's mom), as the community has been whipped up into a frenzy. They very poorly try to cover things up and are individually questioned, in which the police who question Max describe her as "kind of mean" in her answers.
During her interrogation, Dustin, Lucas, and Lucas's sister Erica theorize and posit that during Vecna's kills, he makes a powerful psychic connection with his victims strong enough to rip open a portal through space and time. That's how the gates form, and that may be why he's so intent on killing a bunch of traumatized teenagers: More gates, more places to enter from the Upside Down, which lines up with the Mind Flayer's motivations, linking the two. They also get in touch with the older teens, who have gone through the gate and are in the Upside Down. They plot to meet up at Eddie's trailer. When Max gets out of her interrogation, she joins them, and the group use the police and their parents talking as an opportunity to sneak out and bike to the trailer. Once there, they find the gate on the ceiling.
The younger kids set up a mattress and rope system on their side to get the older teens through. They're almost all out when Nancy goes into a trance, contacted by Vecna. She later relays to everyone what she's told and what she can piece together, the only bit of which is not in the history on the wiki is: Vecna was human!! And Victor Creel's son Henry!! Who did not actually die, but psychically killed his mother and sister then fell into a coma and was taken by the same shady government place that El was raised in!!! It's all connected!!!! Anyway Vecna lets Nancy go, and the kids conference in Max's trailer.
Vecna's trying to invade, there need to be four victims, and Max can still feel him in her thoughts. With this knowledge, she volunteers to be bait. While Vecna's trying to kill her, Max will retreat into her happiest thoughts to try and block him out like before. Lucas stands by at the ready with Kate Bush in case things get too hairy. The others go back into the Upside Down, some drawing Vecna's sentries away, and then while he's in his trance to connect with Max, they unleash hell on him. They gather weapons and prepare, and Max, Lucas, and Erica as a lookout go to the Creel house to enact their plan. Before starting it up, Max and Lucas share a tender moment where they agree to go to the movies on Friday if they aren't all dead.
To get Vecna's attention, Max starts talking about her worst thoughts. She's been thinking about what he said as Billy and says she tried to deny it, but there's some truth. That Billy made her life hell, and sometimes, at night she'd pray for something awful to happen to him. She'd imagine him crashing his car and dying and finally leaving her alone forever. She says she didn't run to him because she didn't think he deserved to be saved, all the while crying. She's tried to forgive herself, but she can't. So now, she prays that something bad happens to her. Lucas suddenly starts talking, going against the plan, calling her awful and saying it's good she's going to die—and Max figures out after some very upsetting several seconds that this is Vecna coming for her. She takes off running through the twisty turny mindscape until she can focus on her happiest memories and hide away in one in particular: The Snow Ball, the dance from eighth grade.
For awhile, it works. Then the gym starts going wrong. Vecna starts taunting her, and showing her snippets of the rest of the plan, which is not going well, as Jason and his buddies have found Erica and Lucas, Vecna's found the group going to the Creel house in the Upside Down, and the distraction team is getting swarmed. He invades Max's happy memory and pins her to the wall psychically. Just when it looks like all hope is lost, El bursts in, as she's been trying to get into Max's mind for some time to protect her. The girls are able to have a brief moment to recollect themselves, before El and Vecna fight. Vecna outclasses her and while she's down, Max tries to attack him with a broken chair, only to get thrown against a wall and knocked out for her troubles. Vecna restrains both girls in his mindscape. El tries and fails to convince Vecna to stop, learning he may ALSO be the Mind Flayer and like, everything that's been tormenting them from the start. It's unclear how much of this Max hears. He begins slowly killing Max, whose body in the physical world starts to rise. As Jason's been fighting with Lucas, her Walkman has been broken in the process, so there's no Kate Bush to bring her out.
As Lucas subdues Jason, Max's legs and right arm twist and break. Her eyes start to bleed, blinding her. An impassioned speech from Mike gives El the mental strength to break out of her restraints and she rips Vecna away from Max. She continues to fight him...but the damage has been done. Max wakes up in reality in Lucas's arms again, but she feebly cries that she can't feel or see anything. As she desperately begs not to die, she slips away. Vecna wins.
The ground rips open in Hawkins. Vecna's invasion is slowly beginning. But Max is dead, right? Well, yes. But El is not content with that. Still connected to Max’s mind, El uses her strong connection with Max to pull her back in what is a literal miracle. She restarts Max’s heart, and Max is taken to the hospital where she is alive but in a coma. Two days later, El still can’t find Max’s mind. The implication is she’s with Vecna and Hawkins is about to become a war zone.
...Aaaand that's where we wait for two years!! Stranger Things!!!
All this aside, a note! We don't really know what state Max will be in when/if she wakes up, and let alone what to do with the Fog healing things in Ryslig. What I’m going with is her broken bones are healed but she has trouble walking and using her right arm, particularly on non-fog days. Additionally, the implication is she's currently blind but with no way to tell if it's permanent or temporary. So, I'm erring on the side of temporary, but with lasting damage similar to her broken limbs. This way, she doesn't wake up in a new world completely unable to see or move, but we don't skirt over "curing" of potential long lasting disabilities. Phew! Let's get to the personality, shall we?
Personality:
Max is a rebel. A girl who marches to the beat of her own drum like she dares the world to try and challenge her. In short, she's non-conformist and defiantly so. She likes video games and skateboarding and building forts out in the woods—typically all things boys like to do. It's gotten her her share of negative attention, even when she was very young and hanging out at the skatepark. Her mom's tried to get her to be softer, gentler, more interested in the sorts of things she is, like her hair and makeup, but Max isn't interested. She would rather defy expectations and do what she wants to...and also not be like her mother, who is soft and gentle and keeps ending up with the worst men who take advantage of her and hurt her. That isn't the root of why Max is who she is, but it certainly hasn't encouraged her to be any less defiant and in-your-face with her interests.
Speaking of her interests, at all times Max loves to be athletic and active—she's a very physical sort of person, and before the death of Billy she's rarely seen without her skateboard. It's something she uses to define herself, as when talking about what she could bring to the Party—the younger teens' name for themselves—she states she could be their zoomer. Sure, it's not a D&D thing, but she's adamant about it. She even at age thirteen has some experience driving! She knows how to get places, and fast, never liking to sit still, "except for movies." A lot of narration in her POV novel describes her as needing to move when she feels antsy or getting uncomfortable if she stays in one place for too long. And it's taught her some valuable life skills, like how to dress a bad gash or scraped up knees when she wipes out on her board.
With all of this, while she has shades of the sort of not-like-other-girls tomboy who looks down on them, really what it comes down to is Max doesn't really know how to talk to most other girls she knows, who tend to care more about fashion and their appearance and being that kind of polite you're taught to be when you're a young girl in the 80s. Max never really learned that—and never really cared to! She's naturally rough around the edges, with her POV novel stating she doesn't know how to even sound "soft" when she talks to others. It's off-putting, and while she doesn't really want to be different from the way she is, she's still a teenager who gets lonely and confused that she doesn't really know how to get people to like her. She's able to reconcile a little bit of her view of feminine girls by the end of season 2, after seeing Nancy easily wield a shotgun, but she still isn't great at making friends with those more feminine girls. It's what makes her friendship with El so influential on her, as when the two start hanging out they become very close, very quickly.
Perhaps part of why it's hard for Max to make friends or talk with others is because of how forthright she is. She knows most people don't say what they're really thinking or feeling, so to get information out of them, throw them off their guard, she's often blunt. It's rarely a calculated thing and rather a side effect of how she just doesn't like to bullshit. She's not going to mince words to protect someone's feelings, especially if she doesn't really care about them. Hell, even when she does care about people, she's straightforward, such as when giving El boyfriend advice during season 3. Max tells it like it is, if she thinks your hobby is stupid (Dustin), thinks your boyfriend is stupid (El), thinks you, her boyfriend, aren't doing a good job (Lucas)—Max speaks her mind and everyone knows it. She is in this way both blunt and very candid...while also being quiet about her own feelings when they could leave her vulnerable. That's one thing Max never wants to be with other people.
In fact, she's carefully crafted herself so she doesn't have to be vulnerable. Something important to note about Max is she's perceptive. When the boys are watching her at school, though Max doesn't spare them a second glance, she can tell. Her mom isn't good at spotting assholes, so she is, and it's easy for her to notice she is. It's not a surprise, but she knows Mike doesn't like her, and she's upfront about asking him. She picks up the little things, like which of her mom's boyfriends has a gambling problem, or when Billy gets that look in his eye that means he's going to be unpredictably dangerous.
On that note, she can tell when her friends (both before and in Hawkins) were pitying her for the Billy situation. It's things like that that make Max a bit of a paradox—she doesn't really care if she doesn't fit in, and she doesn't want to, but she still knows about it, wants to, if only to keep track of who thinks and feels and knows what. It comes with trying to protect herself—because she's got a hard time believing others can protect her. Her mom is, in her eyes, too soft to do so, her dad flakes out on her, Billy is a wildcard that she usually hates, and Neil, her stepdad, is the worst person ever. Those are her constants. Friends from California were at one point or another scared off by Billy, so she's been relatively alone, resulting in her looking out for herself. Becoming perceptive.
And, now that she has some more people she can count on, while she's still perceptive it's not overly so. It sort of varies, honestly, given her mental state. Season 3 is where she's the most balanced, where even though something is off with Billy, at first she doesn't want to believe it's an Upside Down thing, because she cares about him despite it all. She dismisses El's assertions that something's wrong for more practical explanations, even though she can see some of the writing on the wall. Compared to season 2 wherein she's always throwing looks at people, always trying to get an ear in their private conversations, she's more mellow. In season 4 she dips the other way, out of trauma and depression, but that's more about how she's blocking other people out, because Max has a habit of being reclusive when hurt.
Even before Billy's death, as earlier stated, Max hates being vulnerable, even in small ways. She'd much rather tease Lucas than express how much she likes him. She waits until everyone's gone to express just how much she doesn't want Billy to be the Mind Flayer's host. She doesn't express to any of her friends pre-Hawkins about her complicated feelings about Billy, and she sure doesn't speak with her parents either. When her mom and stepdad announce they're moving, her response is to try and run away instead of argue. Again, a doer. Even when she starts to share her feelings with Lucas about her family situation, she trails off and he has to connect the dots on his own—that Billy takes his frustrations out on Max. She avoids saying anything that may make herself look vulnerable.
Thus, when everything gets too much, when it's impossible to hide that she's very vulnerable, she retreats entirely. During the gap between season 3 and season 4, as detailed in Lucas's POV novel, she doesn't once go to movie nights or hangouts with the group after El and Will move away. The day they pack up the Byers' house is perhaps the only day she tries to force herself to be "normal" and happy, and besides that she spends her time alone, either at what Hawkins calls a skatepark or the burned out remains of Benny's Burgers or other places where the people she knows won't be. Lucas describes her as being like a ghost. All she does is walk through the halls of school, listen to her walkman, and grieve. Whenever Lucas finds her at the skatepark, she isn't even skating, which goes to show just how deep her grief and guilt are.
Even before the big loss, Max still shows reclusive tendencies, not really trying to make friends when she first moves to Hawkins, even though she's pretty lonely without them. She goes to the arcade alone, skates alone and openly rebuffs the boys' attempts to be her friend—at first. It's a balancing act, because while she's used to taking care of herself, she still likes other people when she can get along with them, so there's a point where naturally she takes the plunge, even if she's been actively avoiding others, like when she just shows up for trick-or-treating and acts like she hadn't mocked Lucas and Dustin at school, or that Billy hadn't threatened to run the boys over just earlier that day. It takes a lot more when she's in the throes of trauma and grief in season 4, but what's better than nearly dying to get you to try and reconnect with those you love, right?
And yet, reconnecting doesn't mean she's giving up one of her favorite pastimes, which is being rude. Max is so rude and by god she knows it. That's partly why she doesn't like to be "nice," it's that she isn't good at covering things up with gentle platitudes. No, Max is sarcastic, Max is curt, and Max is feisty—when she wants to let you know what she is feeling, she will do so in an energized and biting way. And honestly, she likes it a lot? Like, one of the reasons she connects with Lucas is he doesn't really care that she doesn't know how to sound soft when talking to others. He seems to have that kind of way of interacting with others too, where he is opinionated and kind of loud and people could take that to mean he does not care.
Which is another thing, yes Max is rude, Max likes to tease her friends, Max flips the bird every chance she can get—but that doesn't mean she doesn't care. A lot of her harsher attitude comes from caring, like with feeling that her mother can't protect herself, or even lashing back at Lucas and the rest of the boys when they start doing that thing where they shut her out but not entirely at the start of their friendship, effectively jerking her around. She cares! She can be quite mean about Mike regarding his and Eleven's relationship, but it's because she values El and wants her to know she can stand up for herself. This means her advice is "dump his ass" even though he's also her friend, but she believes in consequences for insensitive behavior. It's just another way she communicates. And, it's how she encourages her friends to be. Tough.
Everything about Max's life has encouraged her to be tough, even before things fell apart after Billy's death. She is naturally curt and often sounds callous even when she isn't, leading others to treat her that way. In response, she throws barbs right back. The world keeps expecting her to be a stereotypical girly-girl and pushes her when she's not. Her mother's taste in men keeps bringing home assholes she has to endure, and then the one who sticks around is the biggest asshole of all. Max's response to all of his hardship is to be tough. Not letting others see her cry, not giving into her vulnerabilities, that sort of thing. Even if she's emotionally affected by something someone says or does, she's going to try her damnedest to act like it's water off her back. That's how she acts with Billy, knowing that opening up would just give him another avenue to mess with her. If you're firm and stand your ground, then you're more secure.
Of course, being tough sometimes leads her to be, well...abrasive, to say the least. Max isn't nice. She knows she isn't nice, and she doesn't really want to be. Sometimes this manifests as sarcasm or calling her friends nerds for their Dungeons and Dragons hobby, even though she likes science and horror movies and various other "nerdy" things. Sometimes, however, it manifests as the urge to be downright cruel. Her POV novel goes into her thought process when Mike is telling her about El in the gym, and in it she notes that sometimes when people are at their most vulnerable, it's like seeing them without their skin. It's wrong, and it makes her want to be mean to provoke a reaction. It's a dark thought, which ties into her sometimes callous response to others messing up. It doesn't occur to her that her mom could be looking out for Billy when she covers up various things he does (like give Max a cigarette), that she could be scared for Billy. She knows Billy's dad is the biggest monster of all in their house, but she it's Billy who she most directly interacts with, so it's Billy who she quietly prayed would get hurt, even though there's a part of her that loves him—or the idea of him, and the lost relationship they could've had.
In short, she's aware of her shortcomings and the fact that she relies more on cutting wit and sarcasm than emotional connection, but it's comfortable. It's safe, even when it doesn't feel that way. She knows the world will not be kind to her in return if she is kind to it. But she also knows too much anger and rage and she could see herself becoming a horrible person. One of Max's greatest fears is giving into her anger and becoming just like Billy, as he was a hurt kid once too. The fact that they are, in her eyes and by his own observations, alike? It scares her.
All of the turbulence and instability in Max's life has led her to rely very strongly on herself. She's independent, or she at least strives hard to be. She knows how to pick locks and build things, because her father instilled in her at an early age that she should know how to do things. If no one else can help you, you can help you. Well, Max took this lesson a little bit too much to heart in some ways. But it also means she has a lot of various skills, like first aid, like quick reaction time, like picking locks. She takes time to teach herself little things that could help, even if she doesn't see a need for it right then. It makes her adaptable, and it makes her stand on her own.
And that lends itself to her being very courageous. Max is not a girl who stands down in the face of danger. When Vecna is actively hunting her, even when Lucas starts to offer other ways out, Max is intensely and utterly determined to not try and find other people they could use as bait. Max knows what she's dealing with, and she doesn't want to pull some other suffering kid in who doesn't. Even though she's escaped death already once and they don't know where Eleven is, or if she can even help, Max wants to stand up to Vecna and face him. She knows the risks, and she's accepted that she wants to live and fight, and that this will be a huge obstacle to that! But she's still going to do it.
Even if she's afraid, Max doesn't stand down. That is in some ways her undoing. But it's a part of who she is, and a big one at that.
5-10 Key Character Traits:
- Non-Conformist
- Active
- Forthright
- Perceptive
- Reclusive
- Feisty
- Tough
- Abrasive
- Independent
- Courageous
Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, EITHER, or opt for 100% RANDOMIZATION? Either!
Opt-Outs: Merperson, Naga, Nephilim, Slime, Simulacrum, Troll, Werebear (Jodariel)
Even though I've got a Harpy I'm fine with leaving that one in the considerations!
Roleplay Sample: Max on the July TDM!